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Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard & My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, in their richly-imagined record of the Yoruba spirit world running alongside modern life, seemed totally unprecedented and fresh when they appeared in the 50s. But Tutuola had an advantage -- he wrote in English and quickly noticed and brought to international attention.

But he has a clear forerunner -- D.O. Fagunwa, who was channeling Yoruba myth into gorgeous novels as early as 1938, with this, his debut and the first novel ever written in the Yoruba language. Because it was composed in Yoruba and went translated until 1968, after his death, his renown seems to have lagged behind Tutuola's, but he his style is much more refined. Part of the excitement of Tutuola is that his stories seem to be recorded at the moment of crystallization out of oral tradition -- he writes with a breathless conversationally and meandering style. Fagunwa, had already leapt beyond this point, balanced between classically elegant storytelling structures and an almost modernist layering structure punctuating the action.

On the other hand, he also had the advantage of translation by Nobel Laureate Nigerian Poet Wole Soyinka, whose vocabulary and elegance of wording are formidable by any standard. Had Tutuola written in Yoruba and been translated by Soyinka, would the style also have appeared more refined? It's hard to judge exactly. But just note that, however wonderful, Tuotula was not the first to take on this world, and D.O. Fagunwa is at least equally, if not more, worthy of you attention.